The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

The old-time sailors used to have their vessels painted on pitchers and punch bowls. (The legend beneath this gallant brig is “Success to the Peggy”)

Title page from the journal of the Lydia, bound to Guam in 1801

“In the inland places the men and women go naked, but they have clothes and on the appearance of a European they run and put them on and are proud of being dressed, but they cannot buy clothes to wear in common because they are so dear, for the Governor gains eight hundred per cent. on all he sells them. And no other person is allowed to trade. They are very obedient to government and it is seldom that there is any disturbance.

“Of the troops one company is of colored men formerly brought from Manila but now more than half Indians. They are well clothed and make a good appearance with bright arms and a good band of music. Of militia there is one regiment of one thousand men. Their arms are in bad order, so rusty that when the Militia paraded to receive the new Governor they were not armed but sat about cleaning them. The payment of this militia is the only cash in circulation on the Island. Every man has ten dollars a year to keep himself in readiness. When pay day comes it causes a kind of market. The Governor’s secretary pays them and they carry the money to the dry goods store and lay it out in Bengal goods, cottons, and in Chinese pans, pots, knives, and hoes, which soon takes all their pay away so that the cash never leaves the Governor’s hands. It is left here by the galleons in passing and when the Governor is relieved he carries it with him to Manila, often to the amount of eighty or ninety thousand dollars.

“The population is estimated at 11,000 inhabitants[34] of which twelve only are white and about fifty or sixty mixed. The Governor and four Friars are the only Spaniards from old Spain, the others are from Peru, Manila, etc. The city or capital of the Island is on the north side in a large bay, but there is no anchorage for shipping. It is a pleasant town and contains five hundred houses of all sorts and one thousand inhabitants of all descriptions. It is on a small plain under a hill which protects it from the heavy gales that sometimes blow from the eastward. The town consists of six streets, one of them three-quarters of a mile long. The buildings of the Governor and Chief Officers are of stone and are good houses. The Palace is two-story and situated in a very pleasant part of the town with a large plantation of bread-fruit trees before it, and a road from it to the landing place. It is in the old Spanish style. The audience chamber is near a hundred feet long, forty broad and twenty high and well ornamented with lamps and paintings. At each end of it are private apartments. In the front is a large balcony which reaches from one end of the house to the other. Behind the palace are all the outhouses which are very numerous. Close to the Palace are the barracks and guard-room. It is a large building and is capable of containing five hundred men with ease. To the northward stands the church, built like one of our barns at home. It has a low steeple for the bells. On the inside it is well adorned with pictures, images, etc. On the south east and near the church is the free school which has a spire. Here the alarm bell is hung, also the school bell. The scholars never leave the house but to go to church.”

In this rambling fashion does Mr. William Haswell, mate of the Salem bark Lydia, discourse of Guam as he saw it in the year of Our Lord, 1801. He dwells at some length also on the remarkable abundance of fish, shells and beche de mer, the animals wild and tame, “the finest watermelons I ever saw,” and the proas or “Prows” which he has seen “sail twelve knots with ease.” Of one of these craft he tells this tale:

“There is a Prow that was drove on shore in a southerly gale from the Caroline Islands with only one man alive. She had been at sea fourteen days, and ten of them without provisions. There were three dead in the boat and the one that was alive could not get out of the boat without assistance. She had but one out-rigger which they shifted from side to side. In other ways she was like the Guam Prows. The man that came in her was well used and has no desire to go back. He looks a little like a Malay, but there was no person in the Island that understood his language.”

Mate William Haswell has left unfinished certain incidents of his voyage to the bewitching island of Guam. Why was the Friar of the outward voyage sent to Coventry? Did the thrifty “old Governor” finally overtake the remains of his wife which sailed away to Manila without him? One might also wish to know more of the brilliantly successful methods of the Governor as a captain of industry. The system by which he kept all the cash in the island in his own pockets, paying his militia in order that they might immediately buy goods of him at a profit of eight hundred per cent., seems flawless. It has not been surpassed by any twentieth century apostle of “high finance.”